Free entry, no booking required. Tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided.

Screen Bandita invite you to an friendly, participatory community gathering. Together, we’ll be exploring personal archival materials and the many ways to revitalise and reinvent them through creative projects. Session runs between 2.00-4.30 and comprises of two segments.

First half: 2.00-3.00
A welcoming space in which to to share, speak and listen. Bring an object, memory, song, text, 8mm or 16mm film, photograph or slide that means something to you to share with the group. An opportunity to connect with others through memories and personal artifacts!
Second Half: 3.30-4.30
An open discussion where all voices and thoughts are very welcome. We will be asking questions such as: Where can I find myself in an archive? how can one connect emotionally with archival material? how can archival material be revitalised and engaged imaginatively and creatively?

All interested individuals, artists, students, archivists etc most welcome. No experience or special knowledge necessary!Screen Bandita are the Edinburgh and Melbourne-based collective of Lydia Beilby and Leanora Olmi.The duo create performative, live-cinema works using archival, found 8mm and 16mm film, slides, photographs and ephemera as source materials. Through the exploration of the ‘forgotten’ and obsolete elements of photochemical film, the analogue projection medium and visual culture, Screen Bandita forge elemental links with the past, while creating new participatory pieces very much rooted in the present. Within their work they aim to foreground the notion of archives as vibrant, living entities to be constantly reinvigorated, reinterpreted, reinvented and debated.

LaborBerlin is proud to host Philippe Leonard from Double Negative in Montréal. Philippe will be showing the program “Various Positions”, which gives a glimpse of recent films made at this artist-run film lab.

This workshop is open to non-LaborBerlin members.
Previous processing experience is recommended, but not necessary.

Following Lutz Garmsen’s Crass Masterclass LaborBerlin announces its second Crass Animation Stand follow-up workshop. In this workshop participants will have the chance to learn the wide array of filmmaking tools that the animation stand offers. Taught by LaborBerlin members Antonio Castles and Lucas Maia present at the masterclass the workshop is intended for beginners with little to no experience with the equipment.

They will learn: how to load the camera, the basic operation of the camera and controls, simple animation techniques, double exposures, fades, rear projection as well as develop and print tests.

Participation is limited and pre-registration is required. To register for the workshop please send an email to labor.organisation@gmail.com

As the LaborBerlin Pilot Artist in Residence (July 2016), I was asked to work with the lab’s newly acquired Crass Animation Stand and Optical Printer System. This was an opportunity to advance past work involving interference patterns, or the “Moiré effect”. Prior to the residency, I finished a film titled, Temples it Knows No Longer. This film employs animation and multiple exposure techniques, in combination with filtered light, to create a motion picture mandala. Here, superimposed colors rotate and blend according to patterns created by interlacing circles. In an effort to further develop this technique, I sought to replace moving images where there had previously been only colored light.

The process involved animating a matte, and from that, printing its reverse or counter matte.

Both seen here:

These matte elements were then optically printed, along with filmed footage, to create a composite of two moving images.

The tests can be seen here:

The footage brought together in these composite images was photographed at Field Station Berlin, located on the outskirts of what was formerly West Berlin. This site is significant as a bygone NSA “listening post”, an American installation designed to intercept East German transmissions. Though defunct, the Field Station inspired me to consider the contemporary debate concerning political boundaries in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. I am exploring how the interference patterns, applied to such imagery, provide a way to visualize and assess this ongoing dialogue. The tests serve as part of a current project exploring the notion of borders (and crossings), both real and virtual.

As a side project I also created a short animation using a book purchased from a secondhand shop near LaborBerlin. The text, an instructional manual, comprises step-by-step images of Judo throws in sequence. I photographed them to reconstitute the movement inherent in these still images across time. It’s a fun movie. It’s called Umarmungen, or Hugs in English.

An installation of projectors, made by LaborBerlin members Antonio Castles and Lucas Maia, that deals with polarised light, the idea of stereoscopy and the decomposition of the moving image. It will be displayed in the studio of the artist duo Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani (Fischer el Sani in the doorbell).

Our artist-in-residence Andrew Kim taught a two day 16mm workshop (23.07 – 24.07.2016). Participants learned how to expose different b&w film stocks with a bolex camera and hand developed the footage as b&w reversal.

LaborBerlin welcomes Andrew Kim as our first Artist-in-residence. Within the residency, Andrew will take advantage of our Crass Animation Stand and create a new work exploring the machine’s artistic possibilities.

As a compliment to his production work, Andrew will also lead a workshop (tba) and present two screenings which will feature his own films and a selection of films made by fellow Los Angeles based filmmakers.

Andrew Kim is an experimental filmmaker whose work is inspired by the material properties of cinema and its unique ability to exemplify abstract ideas and ineffable feelings. Combining formal experimentation with a concern for the phenomenology of the cinematic experience, Andrew’s films are an attempt to understand the movement of the mind. Ultimately, his films attempt to transcend the exact mechanics of motion pictures such that a film might articulate a new kind of knowledge.

His films have screened at a variety of venues and festivals including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Festival du Nouveau Cinema (Montreal), Images Festival (Toronto), BAFICI (Buenos Aries), UnionDocs, and Los Angeles Filmforum, among others. Andrew lives in Los Angeles, California. There he is a staff member at the Echo Park Film Center and teaches film production at the California Institute of the Arts.

LaborBerlin member, Juan David González Monroy taught a two day introduction workshop on the Crass Animation stand. Participants learned all the basic functions of the Crass system and shot and developed the short animation found in the video below.

The project ANALOGUE ZONE (2012-2016) closes with film screenings at the Arsenal – Institute for film and video art and an exhibition, performances and a panel discussion at LaborBerlin / PA58 (Prinzenallee 58). An event with international guests – 16.06-19.06 2016.

ANALOGUE ZONE is a long term project based on a celluloid film training program, involving more than 40 film makers, artists, and amateurs from Egypt, Germany, and Greece. It took place in Cairo and Berlin between 2012 -2016. The workshops resulted in the collective production of around 30 analogue films which both document and bear witness to the initial questionings and responses of a generation of artists to the transition taking place in the region, and particularly Cairo.

The ANALOGUE ZONE FINALE presents films, film performances and film installations, which were produced during the program. The event opens on Thursday, the 16th of June with an exhibition and a book- and DVD publication connected to the program. Two film screenings at the Arsenal will show Super 8 and 16mm works of the participants. Highlight of the event takes place on Saturday, the 18th of June with panel discussion followed by a garden dinner and an performance evening at LaborBerlin’s new location at Prinzenallee 58​. The program consisted of three intensive, mostly practical workshops.

The first workshop established the first independent film lab in Cairo at the alternative film centre CIMATHEQUE through comprising 8 and 16 mm shooting and editing facilities, a processing laboratory, archive library, and screening facilities. During the workshops in Cairo and Berlin practical and technical knowledge about analogue film was mediated methodically, so the Egyptian participants got professional transporters of this knowledge. During the last workshop transnational collaborations were realized.

ANALOGUE ZONE is based on an intensive exchange between the independent film associations LaborBerlin and Cimatheque (Cairo) in cooperation with LabA (Athens). The project​ is funded by the European Cultural Foundation and the Senat Berlin​.​